Discuss: For Love of Unknown Actors

I often come across news that makes me jump with excitement, and just as I go to whip up a post about it, I reconsider. Will anyone else feel the same joy upon reading that Joe Morton has been cast in a small prison indie? To many, he's nothing more than Miles Dyson from Terminator 2. Will anyone care about that cool, but unknown new actor that popped up on a few shows here or there? Or, does anyone else believe that Danny Huston in Clash of the Titans is much more alluring than Fiennes, Worthington, Neeson, and the rest?

Before I started writing about movies, my friends would dub me the expert because I would always pick out some face on the screen and do a little happy dance while the rest of the theater only oggled over the stars. But it wasn't so much knowing everyone and everything, but being drawn to the secondary actors, and remembering them from all of their other parts. While many seem to have bit-part blindness, these actors' faces would always stick in my mind.

I cheer the arrival of Nicky Katt in all of his blockbuster bit parts -- Sin City, Grindhouse, The Dark Knight, whilst wondering why he can't get better work (he's been on the scene since '77 for cripes sakes!). Lauren Ambrose was always recognizable, even before Six Feet Under, for her stints in Can't Hardly Wait and the insanity that is Psycho Beach Party.

Part of it is being ahead of the rush -- waiting patiently for that mainstream gig that will zip talents into superstardom. But for some it's the eternal wait -- seeing talent year after year, part after part, and knowing that the world-at-large will never swoon for them. Which actors and actresses, invisible to most of the world, do you love?